


Maybe I want to be a hero, maybe I just want to die

by Mayhapeternureyev



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Depression, Juno Steel - Freeform, Juno big dumb, M/M, Peter Nureyev - Freeform, Rita - Freeform, Sadness, The Penumbra Podcast - Freeform, and he needs reasons to live, and kill anyone who hurts juno, but juno pines oh lord, he needs cheering up, he pines, moth is baby, oc is moth, wants to take care of ppl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-17 05:41:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21049223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mayhapeternureyev/pseuds/Mayhapeternureyev
Summary: Juno is big dumb and Moth wants to get him to look at a vegetable, wash his hands AT LEAST once a week, and  please please stop replacing meals with adrenaline you DUMB ASS!!!!





	1. Idiot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [butterflyranchu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterflyranchu/gifts).

> Hhhh ok this is me n my OC moth trying to make Juno love himself a lil.
> 
> Colby, thank you for introducing me to mr steel, I love him and want to cry and it's all too much. Oh did I mention Juno is big dumb?

"You are a complete idiot," moth told him, and he drained his glass and shrugged, shoulders heavy with alcohol and adrenaline that comes with sleeping two hours a night for three weeks.

"Do you not hear me, steel?" She continued, "you are going to kill yourself. And nobody will think you did it for anyone else. You genuinely want to die at this point."

"Its better I do it myself than have someone do it for me," Juno muttered, staring at the wall with small, resigned eyes. His skin had a glassy, feverish glint, maybe from the heat, or the drinks, or the pills Moth had found in his desk draw before he found her.

Sleeping pills, Juno had said, lying eyes glinting - and yet, the rest of him had never seemed so dull, so flat and lifeless.

Juno ordered a third drink - a 'severus snape' which moth had never heard of, and when she asked the bartender, he just coughed up a huge hacking ball of gunk, swallowed it and replied "earth garbage designed to kill".

Huh.

She worried about him constantly, when he drank so much he lay and bed and choked on his own vomit until Nureyev sat him up and held him over a bucket.

Peter was good in the worst way, and yet Moth had been grateful that he was around.

They both had put each other on the map, and then Juno had realised that he had no place in the map, in the world. And took off.

Moth wondered if she would ever get to see Nureyev again.


	2. Middle Name Turtle

As Juno steel entered Moth's apartment, he felt something wash over him, something grey and web-like that clung to every damn cell in his body.

She smiled a big, hungry smile and lit a stick of incense.  
Juno hovered by the couch, clammy and unsteady for reasons he wouldn't - couldnt- admit.  
The room became smoky as the incense burned, as Moth adjusted her slinky low-cut shirt, hands callused and arms streaked with car grease and long-dried blood.

"Uh," Juno said, realising that Moth was perfectly happy to sit in silence. She had let her head fall back, exposing the long cool column of her throat and three juxtaposing collar bones.

When she spoke it sounded like a sigh - part pleasure but mostly irritation.

As if she wanted to cultivate Juno Steel like a field of mico-corn and then cut him up and make good creds. As if she knew his taste, and hated how much she thought about it.

"Take a seat, Steel."

Juno sank onto the couch, opposite end to Moth, and looked at his hands. Inspected his nails - full of dirt and ripped into jagged points. He couldn't remember the last time he had washed them in anything other than blood.

"You should take better care of your shell."

"My...uh... shell?"

Moth smiled, a little softer, lips pink as the sunset.

"Sorry, forgot what it was called. Vehicle?"

"Body?"

"Yes, that's what I said. Now --"

"You totally just compared me to a .... t... turtle? Earth creature with the rainbow.... uh?"

Moth thought.  
"The rainbow stomach?"

"Yeah."

"Well, you're anything but a rainbow. Hate to break it to you, babe."

Juno felt his mouth curve, and he thought he was going to actually die when he laughed a little laugh that wasn't the usual I-hate-my-life-kill-me laugh. It was a goddam normal laugh.

Moth's smile was getting softer and softer, like butter, and it was the kinda smile that you would get sick from if you didn't keep it in a cold place, just like butter. And oh, she definitely counted as a cold place.

"Why did you make me to come here," Juno's laugh was gone, now replaced by something tight.

"I didn't make you go anywhere. Nobody can. Well..."

"Move on."

"Uhm, okay. I wanted to teach you something."

"I already know how to fuck and eat, thank you," he made a move to stand up, but in an instant Moth was standing too and in the doorway, broad shoulders squared and mouth even squarier. Was that a word? Juno wondered. He wondered a lot of things.

"You may be able to... fuck and eat, but can you cook stew?"

"W-"

"You're getting sick living off coffee and take-out. Do you see yourself? You're barely there. Your breath is always coffee fumes and I don't even want to think about your bowel movem-"

"OH HELL NO!" 

"Listen. I help you cook stew, you take the stew home and eat a proper meal. Maybe then you will feel better."

"I feel fine," Juno swayed a little, and then pinched himself on the arm. Hard. And then something in him shifted. He allowed himself to take a breath, and it felt like he had been underwater for months. Since - no.

"You might need to wash off that blood before you get your hands on anything edible."

Moth smiled. "Who said blood wasn't part of the dish?"


	3. The Vegetable Discovery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I was re-listening to the first episode (updated) and Juno does say he's a decent cook, so hey, I made him an okay cook. 
> 
> Good luck patreon listeners for S3E1. Hehe.

"Why are you holding a knife right now. A big knife. Like, why."

Moth sniggered and used her hip to close the fridge. "You ever heard of a courgette that chops itself?"

"A what." Juno was not joking. That was a big ass knife in Moth's hand, but that wasn't what made his heart skip. It was the green stick thing she had taken out of the fridge. "You know what, nevermind. I'd rather not have to think about it. You do realise I can cook?"

Moth looked annoyed, a little delated, as she placed the knife firmly on the stained chopping board. Stained with what, Juno didn't know.

"What do you cook then, Mr Chef?"

"I, uh. I like goat cheese and salad sandwiches."

"That's not really cooki-- hang on, goat cheese? The Earth things? That shit is expensive."

Juno smirked, but not an asshole smirk. Not exactly sexy, either, it looked as if he had suffered from a stroke. Moth was concerned for a moment, and then gave up because a stroke was the last of Juno Steel's issues.

"Goat cheese is fuel. I run on fuel."

"You run on coffee." Moth pointed the quivering courgette at him and he stepped back a millimetre, seemingly without noticing.

"As I was saying, the clients pay for me, and all expenses, which equals goat cheese, that fancy laser-seeded bread and coffee filters," Juno finished with a triumphant shuffle forward, because Moth had placed the courgette on the chopping board with the knife and was now cutting it into cubes, seemingly not at all interested in what the hell he was going on about.

"I like the Intergalactic Ice blend that StarCreds does," he added, watching Moth chop into the courgette, that was pulsing like a watery limb. 

"Now," Moth spat through gritted teeth, wrangling the courgette onto the chopping board with a hand, the other cutting away with skill that made Steel sweat a little heavier, until it was nothing but green fluid-seeping cubes, "that's the courgette done. Pass me a red pepper. You have to hold it like this..."

-

Juno sat at the cramped kitchen table and poked his bowl of mush- a fork! How long had it been since he had he held a fork? A month? Two months? 

Knives were much easier to handle, but none were clean and neither of them wanted to plunge their hands into the green goopy water that dripped into the overflowing sink to retrieve one.

Maybe it was for the best - if he kept looking at his food with disgust he was sure Moth would've put her knife to good use.

"Reminds me of my uncle," he said in an uncharacteristically quiet voice, "Although he's not doing so hot right now... well, six months dead can do that to you..."

Moth shot him an irritated look and continued eating, scraping her bite of food to the left of the plate, then to the right, then to her mouth. 

Juno thought there was method behind her madness- maybe she was stalling eating the mush, but when she was finished and he hadn't even started, he realised that he might not get anything else to eat. His apartment cupboards contained few things, guns and screwspanners and a big warm coat and a long, sharp stick he had collected on a case a couple years ago, still coated in the blood of whoever (he couldn't really recall) it had killed. Oh, and maybe a packet of crackers if he was lucky.

He took a bite. It was smoky, spicy and warm. Just how he liked his men. And he sure did like this. Just like... his men?

He ate and Moth smiled.


	4. Fight / Flight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To heal all who have experienced the beginning of S3.
> 
> Yes, I cried writing this.

To: J.S

Juno, I realise this letter will take quite some time to arrive, and when it does no doubt the paper will be splattered with a strange effervescent liquid, and half-opened, but I write it anyway because I want you to know.

I don't hate you. I don't hate your guts, or your mind. I don't hate your hands, or your skin or your eye.

I don't hate your voice, your lips, your tongue.

I don't hate any part of you, and I especially don't hate the part of you that was frightened.

Those days in the Martian Tomb were the best and worst days of my life. Being with you, trusting you with all of me and so much more. The bond we formed.

The bond that still exists, keeping us stringed together like a couple of queer intergalactic bunting pieces.

I keep tabs on you, months later. You're changing. It's slow, and sporadic and it is going to be very painful, but you are going to be okay.

You are discovering life.

Not numbness, not endless glasses of whiskey, not being ashamed of your inability to end yourself without ending others.

Because that's what it was, wasn't it?

You were ashamed you couldn't go in your blaze of glory and leave the world as it was. 

Your inability to die drew me, and many others, into your glow.

You fascinated me, with your witty comments and rough hands. With the smell of your gun-smoke and the curve of your mouth

You left because you were unsure of how you'd fit- your indifference and my calculated everything. You didn't know how to mold yourself - that version of yourself, into anything more mundane.

You couldn't fathom trading fights for kisses, whiskey for hot cocoa.

But now you are changing, forming into something new. A beautiful new Dahlia. Blooming so fresh and good that anyone you pass smells something sweet and full of hope.

I have watched and I will keep watching. 

It's never been fight or flight for you, my love, has it?

It's been fight fight or fight your whole life. A never ending battle that never really gives you time for a breather, never gives you time to eat enough or sleep enough or choose.

But, in the early hours of that morning after, you finally chose.

After all these years, you chose for yourself.

And you chose flight.

I don't hate you, Juno.

I love you.

\- Nureyev


End file.
